All posts tagged serious fraud office

Autonomy founder Mike Lynch, who has denied allegations of accounting irregularities under his watch.

The U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office, which investigates and prosecutes fraud and corruption, has opened an investigation into the 2011 sale of software company Autonomy to HP.

The $11 billion deal turned out to be a terrible one for HP, which has written off much of the value of its purchase and now claims that accounting irregularities at Autonomy created a false picture of how much the company was really worth.

Autonomy’s founder has denied the claims, but the fight is now playing out on multiple fronts: HP is pursuing its own investigation, while regulators in the U.S. and U.K. are also looking into the company and the deal. Today’s announcement from the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) adds a new player to the mix.

But it also shows that while HP may indeed have paid too much for Autonomy, the British company’s software remains useful for a number of complex computing tasks, including — drumroll — investigating allegations of serious fraud at Autonomy. From the SFO statement:

It has also been reported that the SFO uses an Autonomy product, Introspect, as a document management tool. The SFO is keen to ensure that there is now no conflict of interest, or perception of such a conflict and it is obliged as a first step to make inquiries to ensure that it can continue as the investigating body. It is undertaking this work at present.

The real question: is it using Autonomy software to undertake the task of ensuring there is no conflict of interest?